Through his refreshing lack of self-seriousness or sanctimony, Ragnar Kjartansson has cut a jagged, joyful figure on the contemporary art scene. Indeed, with solo exhibitions in Boston and New York, the artist has recently been favored with the art world’s fickle attentions and is having something of a well-deserved moment. Ragnar Kjartansson, “The End–Venice,” 2009. Performance view. Venice, June 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring[…..]

Windows of Opportunity (2013), Jiten Thukral’s and Sumir Tagra’s (branded as Thukral & Tagra) latest show at Art Plural gallery, gives expression to the cacophonous spectacle of hybridity that defines contemporary India, a site that they deem to be a hotbed of conflicted histories and global transactions. These issues of societal flux are explored in their oeuvre through an eclectic visual language composed of cartoonish[…..]

In early 2011, when I visited a number of young Hong Kong artists’ in their studios, they spoke of their frustration at the focus of curators on art from mainland China, and of their sense of being a ‘poor relation’. Add to that the tensions simmering just below the surface as cashed–up mainlanders poured into Hong Kong, and it seemed a recipe for resentment. In[…..]

Born in 1962 of parents who were attached to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Geng Jianyi grew up in a country shaped by rigid, state-mandated structures that had, by the late 1960s to the early ‘70s, fallen a long way short of the idealistic socialist Chinese state that Mao Zedong had envisioned. Where solidary socialism was intended to create commitment to the system by way[…..]

Belgian artist Luc Tuymans is perhaps best known for challenging the post Abstract Expressionism debate about the relevancy of painting by taking on subjects as Belgian colonialism, the Holocaust and the War on Terror. In his tenth exhibition at David Zwirner in New York, The Summer is Over, Tuymans scrutinizes the relevance of capturing reality in painting. Alluding to ghosts of the present and future, the[…..]

Help Desk is an arts-advice column that demystifies practices for artists, writers, curators, collectors, patrons, and the general public. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. I am a painter with good gallery representation. There seems to be public interest in the work I make and I am sometimes asked about prints or reproductions. As a printmaker, I don’t like[…..]

Help Desk is an arts-advice column that demystifies practices for artists, writers, curators, collectors, patrons, and the general public. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. Help Desk is cosponsored by KQED.org. 2012 is almost gone, and over the course of this year I received some questions that didn’t seem quite right for the column—either because they only required a[…..]